“Supervision by Public Opinion” or by Government Officials? Media Criticism and Central-Local Government Relations in China

Abstract

Despite the sophisticated control of media in China, criticism of the party-state is not uncommon. Why does the authoritarian regime allow criticism? This article offers an explanation based on political institutions. It examines central-local government relations and finds that criticism can help advance the interests of different political actors. Criticism of local government bureaus and officials can help the central government ensure local compliance and create favorable public opinion. Local leaders can also use criticism to establish political authority over their subordinates and impress superiors, thus enhancing their chances to advance their career. Despite formal institutional arrangements, both central and local leaders have used informal measures such as criticism to achieve their political objectives. This underscores the importance of informal measures in the operation of China’s authoritarian regime.

Keywords

media politics criticism central-local government relations Chinese politics

Media control is a crucial part of authoritarian rule in China. Scholars and observers have pointed out that the Chinese government not only practices sophisticated methods of media control (Bradsher, 2012), but also pressures foreign media outlets operating in China to censor reports that the government deems sensitive (Cook, 2013). The fundamental reason for media control is to maintain the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Censorship can manipulate public opinion by suppressing dissent and alternative information. More important, it can deter collective action by limiting citizens’ ability to coordinate (Bueno de Mesquita and Downs, 2005; Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin, 2009: 645; King, Pan, and Roberts, 2013, 2014; Shirk, 2011: 5).

Despite the key role of media control in sustaining authoritarian rule, criticism of the government is not uncommon in the discourse of the Chinese mass media (Chan, 2002; Esarey and Xiao, 2008, 2011; Hassid, 2012; King, Pan, and Roberts, 2013, 2014; Liebman, 2005; Xiao, 2011; Yang and Calhoun, 2007). Such criticism involves issues ranging from local officials’ misconduct in providing public goods and services to outright corruption. While the targets of such criticism are generally government bureaus and officials at the local level, it exists widely in both traditional and new media. Given China’s sophisticated media control system, it would be implausible to argue that the government is losing control over the media, especially when pre- and post-publication censorship still reins in the media and the arrest or detention of journalists remains common.¹ Indeed, criticism can erode regime legitimacy, aid collective action, and facilitate the emergence of an independent public sphere (Eickelman and Anderson, 2003; Fox, 1988; Huntington, 1996; Randall, 1993; Rawnsley and Rawnsley, 1998a; Rozumilowicz, 2002; Skidmore, 1993). Supporting evidence has been found in Poland (Millard, 1998), Taiwan (Rawnsley and Rawnsley, 1998b), Mexico (Lawson, 2002), the Muslim world (Howard, 2010), and many other places that have gone through regime change (Fox, 1988; Teorell, 2010). Considering these consequences, why does the Chinese government allow media criticism?

Scholars have directly or indirectly examined this question from the perspectives of society and the state. Even in the face of a repressive regime, there are still critical voices in society that occasionally surface, especially after the Internet became widely accessible in China. For scholars who study grassroots activism involving citizens, nongovernmental organizations, and other social groups, these critical voices represent an important development in state-society relations in China (Esarey and Xiao, 2008, 2011; Xiao, 2011; Yang, 2009, 2010; Yang and Calhoun, 2007). However, the advocacy of grassroots activists does not explain why the government allows criticism to exist. From the state’s perspective, criticism may be tolerated as a way of manipulating public opinion (Chan, 2007). Media criticism can help the state create a positive image of the government as one that acknowledges and solves problems arising from rapid socioeconomic change. Moreover, when considering the distinct interests of the central government, scholars have found that the central government often uses criticism of local governments and officials to ensure local compliance and improve governance (Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin, 2009; Liebman, 2005: 126; Lorentzen, 2014; Zhao, 1998: 30; Zhou, 2000). However, when examining the media in the framework of central-local government relations, local leaders’ interests and their use of criticism have not been sufficiently addressed. While the central government has the final say in all matters related to the media, local governments are often more involved than the central leadership in the daily news production and operation of the local media. Yet, how local leaders, such as provincial and municipal level officials, make use of criticism in the mass media remains understudied.

Drawing on 27 in-depth interviews with journalists, newspaper editors, television producers, media scholars, and critics conducted during fieldwork in China from May to August of 2013, a one-month nonparticipant direct observation at a municipal television station in eastern China from May to June of 2013, and secondary data from newspaper articles, surveys, and archival research, this article explores the various roles of media criticism in China’s central-local government relations. Media criticism in the form of investigative reports, regular news reports, and innovative news programs, all discussed in detail below, has become an important tool of the central and local governments in China in achieving their respective goals. In line with the policy of “supervision by public opinion” 舆论监督, media criticism is allowed to exist and is influential despite the state’s strict control over the media. Examining the distinct interests of central and local leaders reveals that the central leaders may use criticism to rein in local officials and create a favorable image of “central good, local bad,” advancing the regime’s legitimacy at the expense of local officials. More important, local leaders may also use criticism to show off their governing capability and advance their career by establishing authority over their subordinates and impressing their superiors.²

This article seeks to make two contributions. First, it adds to the literature on central-local government relations in China. Previous studies have examined the vertical structure of the Chinese government and established that by granting certain autonomy to lower-level governments, the central leadership shifts responsibility and blame to local governments while enabling them to handle popular resistance (Cai, 2008, 2015; Landry, 2008). Despite this insight, what has not been sufficiently studied is that local officials at middle levels, such as those at the provincial and municipal levels, also use media criticism to advance their political goals of establishing authority among subordinates for effective governance and impressing superiors to win promotion. They typically use the media at the same administrative level or lower. This article thus adds nuance to the typically two-level framework that includes only central and local governments.³ Although analytically convenient, this dichotomous framework often overlooks the distinctive interests of local officials at middle levels. Officials at provincial and municipal levels, for example, have to be simultaneously effective at managing subordinates and following instructions from above. These considerations from both above and below shape political incentives and behavior. This article probes the incentives of these government officials and the role of media criticism in facilitating their relations with governments above and below.

Second, the importance of informal measures in the operation of China’s authoritarian regime is illustrated. Despite the formal institutional relations between central and local governments, informal measures such as using media criticism have helped the central government and local officials achieve their respective political goals.

Modernization theory suggests that media criticism may be a sign of the opening up of political discourse and the receding of authoritarian control. Socioeconomic development, in this view, will eventually produce a middle class that demands more political rights. The media criticism discussed in this article, however, is not precisely the same sort of criticism suggested in modernization theory or seen in democracies. In China, only with the government’s tolerance can the mass media engage in criticism. Another caveat is that there are political, commercial, and journalistic factors driving critical reporting. This article, however, focuses on the political factors.

The remainder of this article proceeds as follows. The policy of supervision by public opinion is analyzed to understand why the Chinese government intentionally allows and uses criticism. The relations between central and local governments are then discussed, serving as a basis to understand the incentives embedded in such relations and the role of media criticism in advancing political interests at different administrative levels. Finally, the article concludes with implications for understanding authoritarian politics.

Supervision by Public Opinion

The policy of “supervision by public opinion” makes criticism of the party-state acceptable, or even desirable, in principle. Despite the key role of media control in sustaining its authoritarian rule, the CCP has evolved in its views on the political role of the media, especially after media reform in the 1980s. While the dominant role of the media remains propaganda and “thought work,” the CCP has come to use the media to supervise local officials. This is manifested in the notion of supervision by public opinion that entered the CCP’s lexicon in the late 1980s.

The first official use of the term “supervision by public opinion” was in the 1987 Report to the Thirteenth Party Congress. Party General Secretary Zhao Ziyang stated,

We should use all kinds of modernized news and propaganda tools to increase reporting on government and party affairs, to allow supervision by public opinion to play a role, to support the masses’ criticizing the weaknesses and wrongdoings in our work, and to struggle against bureaucratism and other kinds of unhealthy tendencies. (Zhao, 1987)

Since then, supervision by public opinion has been mentioned in every Party Congress report. Legally, supervision by public opinion became a part of the Regulations on Intra-Party Supervision of the Chinese Communist Party (Draft) implemented in 2004. Article 33 states,

Under the leadership of the CCP and according to relevant rules and procedures, news media should play the role of supervision by public opinion through either internal or public reports. Departments and cadres at all levels should emphasize and support supervision by public opinion, listen to criticisms and suggestions, and improve their work.⁴

The major form of supervision by public opinion is exercised by the media through investigative reporting. Investigative reporting has ebbed and flowed. Around 2003, there was a small peak in investigative reporting, targeting government agencies, public policies, and businesses (Tong, 2012: chap. 4; Zhan, 2007: 2). Since then, some scholars have observed that investigative reporting has declined, a result they attribute to increasing pressure from the CCP and advertisers (Tong, 2012: chap. 4; Tong and Sparks, 2009). However, not only are investigative reports still influential and needed by the government, other types of criticism in the form of regular news reports or innovative news programs have become important tools used by both central and local governments to achieve their respective goals. This is a result of the unique central-local government relations in China.

Central Leadership’s Use of Political Criticism

As has often been argued, support for China’s central leadership is quite high, especially when compared with the support for national leadership in democracies (Jie Chen, 2004; Kennedy, 2009; Tang, 2005; Wang, 2005). Moreover, public support is generally higher for the central leadership than for local governments (Li, 2004, 2008; Saich, 2007). Scholars have identified at least two mechanisms that account for this phenomenon. First, discontent with local governments can be attributed to the side effects of economic reform, such as the loss of social welfare, lay-offs from state-owned enterprises, and government corruption (Hurst and O’Brien, 2002; Manion, 2004; Pei, 2006; Sun, 2004), which most citizens tend to blame on the “closest face of the state,” the easiest target of grievances (Hildebrandt, 2013: 40). Second, the public may blame the implementers of unpopular policies, that is, local governments, rather than the central leaders who created those policies (Hildebrandt, 2013: 40). While these mechanisms focus on either the actual issues of contention or the process of policy creation and implementation, an important missing factor is the mass media’s role in shaping people’s perceptions. Criticism of local governments and officials can help the central leadership create an image of “central good, local bad,” contributing to its public support. Furthermore, central leaders may use media criticism to monitor local officials in order to ensure local compliance.

The Central Control over Local Officials

Although the unitary Chinese party-state has put in place elaborate institutional arrangements, ensuring local compliance has been contentious. Local compliance is defined as local governments and officials closely following and faithfully implementing laws, regulations, and policies from the central leadership. In order to ensure local compliance, the party-state wields at least three important institutional components. First, according to the constitution, the Chinese party-state is unitary and all local governments are subordinate to the central government (Zheng, 2006: 103).⁵ For example, the State Council, the top executive organ of the Chinese party-state, theoretically has absolute authority and power over provincial governments, which must “accept the unified leadership by the State Council, implement administrative measures, regulations and decisions by the State Council, and be responsible and report to the State Council” (Pu, 1995: 223).

Second, the party-state uses the nomenklatura system to exercise control over local officials (Burns, 1989, 1994; Huang, 1995; Manion, 1985). Introduced from the Soviet model, “the nomenklatura is a list of leading positions over whose appointments the Party exercises full control” (Edin, 2003a: 44). In China’s nomenklatura system, Party Organization Departments at each administrative level have the authority to make personnel decisions—including promotion, dismissal, and transfer—at one level down the administrative hierarchy (Huang, 1995). As a result, officials at lower levels are held accountable to their immediate superiors. John Burns (1999) argues that the Chinese party-state remains Leninist today partly because of the nomenklatura system.

Third, in the late 1980s, in an attempt to improve governance, the central leadership introduced the cadre responsibility system that sets up specific goals, or “hard targets,” that must be met (O’Brien and Li, 1995: 764). The new measures include setting quantitative goals, introducing competition among state bureaucrats, using economic incentives to encourage goal fulfillment, and using third parties to measure government performance (Edin, 2003a: 37). The evaluation of cadres’ performance based on hard targets is used to assign jobs and determine remuneration (O’Brien and Li, 1999: 172; Heberer and Trappel, 2013). The goals of the cadre responsibility system are twofold: to increase governing efficiency and to better monitor or control local officials (Edin, 2003a). Moreover, under the system, cadres may be rotated to different geographical areas or administrative levels. The main purpose is to curb localism, a serious danger in the eyes of the central leadership (Edin, 2003a).

The Problem of Local Noncompliance

Despite the institutional arrangements designed to ensure local compliance, noncompliance has persisted (Cai, 2015: chap. 2). Indeed, many scholars have noted that local governments in China and many other communist countries should not be viewed as mere implementers and faithful followers of the central leadership (Nelson, 1980; Triska, 1980). Local noncompliance can take various forms, including selectively implementing policies (O’Brien and Li, 1999), delaying the execution of a policy, or bending the details of a policy to serve local interests (Berman, 1978; Chung, 2000; Wang, 2013).

There are several explanations for local noncompliance. Institutionally, the cadre responsibility system requires segments of local governments to monitor and report on the performance of their subordinate cadres. This can create biased evaluations (Edin, 2003a) and induce pernicious gaming behavior (Gao, 2015). Many cadres are able to pass the performance evaluation and be rewarded due to flawed institutional design and lax evaluation processes, despite the stringent criteria specified in the cadre responsibility system (Burns and Wang, 2010; Heberer and Trappel, 2013).

Furthermore, fiscal decentralization and the development of local state-business relations have contributed to the rise of local interests that may be inconsistent with the interests of the central leadership (Chen, 2012: 63; Walder, 1994: 311). The fiscal decentralization starting from the 1980s has had important political consequences (Guo, 2009). Local governments, subject to an evaluation system that prioritizes “drawing in businesses and investments” and “developing the economy,” have great incentives to bow to local businesses more than to higher political authorities. This has created a more “downward” and less “upward” orientation among local officials (Walder, 1994: 311). On the other hand, if a central policy is perceived to threaten local interests, it may encounter resistance from local cadres in order to protect their vested interests (Van Aken and Lewis, 2015; Chung, 2000). For example, in the early 1990s the central government realized excessive taxation and fees collected by local township governments could lead to protests and instability. As a result, it passed the 1993 Agriculture Law, which stipulated that rural taxes should not exceed 5% (Luo and Sun, 1993: 56). However, local taxes still averaged 10% of total farm income after the legislation was passed, with some localities levying taxes of up to 40% (Wedeman, 2001: 59). While the inconsistency between central policy and local implementation has provided a powerful reason for the center to blame local governments for noncompliance, the center also bears some of the blame. The central government has been unwilling to take into serious consideration the limited resources available to local officials (Chen, 2015; Kennedy, 2007). This only exacerbated the difficulty in collecting taxes and fees and increased local officials’ incentives to collect taxes and fees higher than officially approved before the abolition of agricultural tax in 2006. Besides local interests, the inherently contradictory central policy in the 1990s on rural taxes and fees also contributed to local noncompliance (Chen, 2015). Nevertheless, what was apparent to farmers was that local officials collected higher taxes and fees than the central policy allowed. For the central government, this was a case of noncompliance.

Implications for Central Responses

If central control over local officials is not as effective as it is designed to be, how has the central leadership reacted to ensure local compliance? Among many other measures,⁶ including tolerating small-scale social protests (Chen, 2012), implementing village elections (Kennedy, 2007), introducing transparency initiatives (Lorentzen, Landry, and Yasuda, 2014), and granting more freedom to the media (Egorov, Guriev, and Sonin, 2009; Nathan, 2003), the central leadership has selectively encouraged the media to disclose local officials’ wrongdoing, from incompetence to corruption, in order to shift blame to the local officials (Cai, 2008, 2015: chap. 6), creating an image of “central good, local bad” among the public. More importantly, such criticism can correct recalcitrance.

This type of criticism allowed by the central government tends to share the following two characteristics. First, the administrative level of the government bureaus or officials criticized is lower than the level of the media.⁷ Second, if high-level officials are criticized, such criticism usually comes after the central leadership has decided to investigate or convict the criticized officials. In this way, criticism of lower-level government bureaus and officials and the lack of criticism of high-level leaders can create an image of “local bad.” At the same time, criticism publicized through the mass media suggests to the public that the central leadership is well-intentioned, contributing to the image of “central good.”

President Xi Jinping, who came to power in late 2012, has used the mass media to enhance the legitimacy of the central government as part of his ongoing anticorruption campaign. For example, reports critical of corrupt officials, some of which have detailed the inconceivable scale of illegally acquired wealth, have appeared in many media outlets. With such publicity, the anticorruption campaign may serve Xi and the regime through (1) showing to the public the determination of the central leadership to root out corruption that has contributed to wealth inequality and social injustice; (2) signaling to lower-level officials that Xi, as the new leader, has the authority and capability to implement rules and policies that he envisions and oversees; and (3) actually reducing the scale of corruption (Wedeman, 2012).

Such critical reports have been typically produced after the investigation or conviction of officials. For example, according to Huashangbao (China Business News), a newspaper published in Xi’an, after the anticorruption campaign was launched, many local officials hurried to find real estate agents to sell apartments under their names, which they may have purchased with public money (Huashangbao, 2012). More recently, China Net, an official news portal managed by the Chinese Internet News Center under the News Office of the State Council, published a list of convicted high-level corrupt officials since Xi took power (Li, 2014). As the anticorruption campaign continues, the media have followed up and published critical reports on corrupt officials who were already investigated or convicted.

Some critical reports have delved deep into corruption cases, also investigating the business people involved. For example, Xinjingbao (Beijing News), a paper managed by the Propaganda Department of the CCP Beijing Committee, published an investigative report (Li and Jia, 2013) on Zhu Tianxiao, a real estate developer who benefited from his close relationship with the former mayor of Nanjing, Ji Jianye. While Zhu gained significant wealth through advantageous treatment, Ji also got rich and increased his power through the economic growth generated by Zhu’s real estate developments. Both Ji and Zhu were investigated by the Central Discipline Commission of the CCP. Going deeper, the Xinjingbao investigative report traced Ji’s relationship with other business people during his tenure as the mayor of Yangzhou before he became the mayor of Nanjing. Ji’s downfall has resulted in the downfall of a number of businessmen and businesswomen.

Such reports critical of corrupt officials help the central leadership publicize its effort to stamp out corruption. Since the campaign started in 2013, the public generally has had a favorable view of the campaign and of Xi. According to the Clean Government Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, from 2012 to 2014 the percentage of citizens who were very confident or somewhat confident in the government’s anticorruption campaign rose from 60% to 75.8% (Liu, 2015). According to the New York Times, in nearly two dozen interviews, many Chinese said that they thought Xi was serious about anticorruption, despite their doubts about the effectiveness of the campaign (Jacobs, 2015).

The public perception of “central good, local bad” has been previously studied, though the contributing factors analyzed have varied from study to study. For example, based on survey data, Lianjiang Li (2008) finds that Chinese farmers have more confidence in the central leadership’s intent than its ability to ensure faithful implementation of its policies by local governments. Data from the third wave of the Asian Barometer Survey also suggest more trust in the central government than in the local governments, as shown in Table 1.

Table 1.

Trust in Political Institutions in China, 2011.

	National government in Beijing	Local government
A great deal of trust	1,772 (51.02%)	670 (19.29%)
Quite a lot of trust	1,462 (42.10%)	1,964 (56.55%)
Not very much trust	84 (2.42%)	578 (16.64%)
None at all	19 (0.55%)	68 (1.96%)
No answer	136 (3.92%)	193 (5.56%)

Note. N = 3473. The category “No answer” includes “Do not understand the question,” “Can’t choose,” and “Decline to answer.”

Source. Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University, Asian Barometer Survey Wave III, Mainland China, 2011.

Indirectly, some important findings in the study of Chinese politics are premised on the public perception of “central good, local bad.” O’Brien and Li’s seminal work on “rightful resistance” (O’Brien, 1996; O’Brien and Li, 2006) and later studies that have applied this framework (Chen, 2012; Hand, 2006; Kerkvliet, 2014) are premised on peasants’ and urban protesters’ perception that the central government and the institutional and legal system exist for the good of the people while local officials are corrupt or recalcitrant. Criticism of local officials in the media has contributed to creating and reinforcing such an image.

The central leadership may also use criticism in the mass media to monitor local officials and ensure local compliance. In order to achieve these goals, the central leadership encourages critical reports that tend to disclose local recalcitrance before relevant officials are investigated or convicted, unlike the type of critical reports discussed above.

For example, a recent local television report on a deputy township head in Henan province resulted in this official being suspended from office and investigated by the county Discipline Inspection Commission (Ramzy, 2015). In the television news report, this official appeared drunk while on duty and failed to answer questions from residents about pollution. The report was first broadcasted on Henan Television, a public channel at the provincial level. Xinhua News Agency, the state-run national-level news outlet, quickly picked up this report and put it on its website. This suggests that while this official was not on the radar of the county Discipline Inspection Commission, the broadcast of the incident on provincial television and the later report by Xinhua resulted in his suspension and investigation. Moreover, that Xinhua picked up this report suggests implicit approval from the central leadership of such critical reporting, which can be used to rein in local officials guilty of misconduct.

Of course, not every critical report is broadcast or published by the news media. Indeed, the institutions and techniques of information control in China are highly sophisticated and have been largely effective, resulting in self-censorship, effective monitoring, and post-publication punishment (Esarey, 2005; Lorentzen, 2014; Stockmann, 2013; Tong, 2010; Zhao, 1998). Because such reports often disclose cases that had not previously been brought to light, they tend to be less critical than reports on cases that have already been made public. Such critical reports may focus on issues such as the incompetence of local officials stemming from negligence or miscommunication, but not nefarious schemes or gross corruption.

In 1994, the creation of Focus 焦点访谈, a reputable and popular China Central Television (CCTV) news show known for its investigative reporting, was the idea of Ding Guan’gen, the head of the Central Propaganda Department of the CCP, to shape public opinion (Chan, 2007: 555). With the support of central leaders, Focus has been very effective at criticizing local governments and officials, often at township, county, and municipal levels. Its official website has a special section devoted to reporting on how relevant government agencies have responded to its reports, most of which have been aimed at uncovering noncompliant or incompetent behavior.⁸ For example, in its October 22, 2013 report, Focus disclosed problems with local officials helping farmers acquire livestock loans from local banks in Guanghe county, Gansu (CCTV, 2013). The problem was not corruption, but miscommunication between the bank and the government that derailed the livestock loans. In the same night of the broadcast, provincial-level leaders in Gansu issued directives to solve the problem. Municipal-level leaders convened an emergency meeting that night to discuss possible solutions (Yangshiwang, 2013a). In other cases, reports from Focus may attract attention from ministry leaders at the central level. For example, in its October 23, 2013 report (Yangshiwang, 2013b), Focus disclosed illegal medical practices in Beijing and Hubei. This led the National Health and Family Planning Commission, a commission under the State Council, to establish a special task force to squelch illegal medical practices.

Since local journalists must be more modest than their central counterparts, producing critical reports consistently is a challenge. Furthermore, local media outlets are directly controlled by the local government at matching administrative levels, which naturally want to protect their own reputation. However, during my fieldwork at a municipal television station in eastern China,⁹ I found a common technique local journalists use to find space for critical reporting, though this search is mainly driven by commercial pressure rather than political considerations.

My fieldwork centered on a nightly news program broadcasted on the main channel of the municipal television station that has a segment devoted to supervision by public opinion reports. The producer told me that this segment consists of critical reports, many of which involve government bureaus and officials. Although there is a strict limit on what can be reported and journalists often receive calls from local leaders asking them to refrain from investigating a news story, the segment survived and has become popular.

Based on nonparticipant direct observation of the news production process at the television station, I found that when facing resistance from local officials on critical reports, journalists often invoke the notion of “the public’s right to know” 知情权 in order to get access and information. The news production process that I observed includes fielding hotline calls on grievances, conducting interviews with informants, investigating news stories, and editing the audio and video of news stories. During the investigation process, seeing a news crew with a camera and a microphone, local officials often instantly became defensive if not hostile, assuming that the journalists intended to create trouble. By invoking “the public’s right to know,” journalists were often able to make the case that they did not mean to create trouble; instead they simply wanted to know what happened. This technique works from time to time. When it works, it often results in local officials improving their behavior and in the resolution of grievances. Sometimes the investigation of a news story alone could result in local officials’ positive behavioral changes, regardless of whether the news story was eventually broadcasted on television. Therefore, even if the criticism is modest, local news media can be effective in monitoring local officials for compliance.

Local Leaders’ Use of Political Criticism

While central leadership may use critical news to establish a positive image among the public and ensure local compliance, local leaders may also turn to criticism in order to strengthen their authority over their subordinates and to impress their superiors. Local leaders typically use the media that are at the same administrative level or lower. Such use of media criticism can be attributed to the incentives rooted in China’s cadre management system.

Government officials in China are not popularly elected, but instead are appointed by their superiors through the nomenklatura system. Specifically, provincial level leaders such as the party secretaries and governors are directly appointed by the Central Organization Department of the CCP. For leaders at lower levels, such as the municipal, county, and township levels, it is the leader at the next level up that does the appointing. This is an instance of the “one-level-down management” model (O’Brien and Li, 1999). For example, the county head is usually appointed by the mayor of the municipality to which that county belongs. Therefore, if an official wants to be promoted and advance his or her career, impressing superiors is a priority.

In addition to controlling appointments, the Chinese party-state rotates government officials among regions in order to curb localism. For example, provincial leaders are routinely transferred between provinces or posts in Beijing to prevent the emergence of local power centers (Bo, 2002: chap. 4; Lawrence and Martin, 2013; Li, 2001: chap. 3). In June 1999, the Central Organization Department of the CCP issued Regulations on Cadre Exchange, which specifies that (1) county and municipal top leaders should not be selected from the same region; (2) those who head a county or a city for over ten years should be transferred elsewhere; and (3) provincial leaders should be transferred more frequently to another province or the central government (Li, 2001: 65–66). Based on this cadre management system, provincial-level leaders have a great need to establish their personal authority in their jurisdiction. Because many of them rotate between provinces and Beijing, they may be entirely new to the provinces they govern.

One such provincial leader was Li Yuanchao. He was the vice minister of culture from 1996 to 2000 before being appointed as the deputy party secretary of Jiangsu in 2000. From 2001 to 2003, he was concurrently the party secretary of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu. From 2002 to 2007, Li was the party secretary of Jiangsu province. After five years as the head of Jiangsu, Li was again promoted back to Beijing as the head of the Central Organization Department of the CCP and a member of the Politburo from 2007 to 2012. During this time, he was concurrently a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CCP. Since 2013, Li has served as the vice president of China (Interviews 4, 11, and 16).¹⁰ Based on this brief account of Li’s political career, he is an example of a high-level official who was appointed and promoted in and out of Beijing.

As discussed earlier, the main reason the central government moves leaders between provinces and Beijing is to curb localism. However, precisely because of this practice, provincial leaders need to establish and consolidate their authority in an unfamiliar environment while, at the same time, trying to govern. In the case of Li, despite being a native of Jiangsu, he started his political career in Shanghai. After he was transferred to Jiangsu from Beijing in 2001, Li turned to the media in order to establish an image as a tough and formidable leader. He personally visited the newsroom of a popular television news program, Just in Nanjing 南京零距离, aired on the city channel of Jiangsu Television. He encouraged an anchor famous for his outspoken and sharp commentary, Meng Fei 孟非, to produce more critical news reports on government officials. Li even specified that the criticism could go all the way up to officials at the bureau chief level 局长级. As a result, Just in Nanjing devoted a substantial amount of airtime to critical reporting, most of which centered on insufficient provision of public goods and services and bureaucratic ineptitude. According to a content analysis of Just in Nanjing, only 5 of the 170 news reports in 2003 were positive party and policy news. In contrast, 93 reports were critical of government bureaus and officials. The remaining news was nonpolitical or neutral (Chen Long, 2004).

Following the strategy of using criticism to establish personal authority, Li also launched and publicized through the news media an event called “Ten Thousand Citizens Evaluate Government Bureaus” 万人评议机关 in 2001 when he was the party secretary of Nanjing. This was part of Li’s idea of “service-oriented government,” meaning that the public should evaluate government leaders based on their performance (Miller, 2011). During this event, the Nanjing municipal government provided Nanjing residents with a list of 70 government bureaus under the municipal government and then the municipal government randomly selected and invited 10,000 Nanjing citizens to anonymously evaluate the 70 government bureaus. Bureaus that ranked at the bottom of citizen evaluations were criticized and their responsible leaders were also criticized or even demoted. Bureaus that ranked at the top were praised as models for other bureaus to learn from. The results of the citizen evaluations were publicized through the news media. This was later institutionalized as a yearly event. The most recent “Ten Thousand Citizens Evaluate Government Bureaus” in Nanjing was held in December 2016.¹¹

The impact of such events in Nanjing was palpable. In the 2001 event, the chiefs of the bottom five bureaus on the public evaluations list were all punished. According to a report in People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Central Committee of the CCP, the chief of the Real Estate Bureau was demoted, the chief of the Landscape Bureau was dismissed, and the remaining three bureau chiefs were criticized and “reeducated” (Renmin ribao, 2002). In addition, Xinhua published commentary praising these events as reducing “the distance between the government and the people” (Xinhuawang, 2004). Li’s strategy of turning to criticism not only helped him establish and consolidate his authority, but also gained him attention and approval from the central leadership.

Besides using critical media reports to buttress their authority, local leaders have also manipulated the media to impress their superiors. As discussed earlier, the nomenklatura system has government officials selected by their superiors. Indeed, “local leaders’ primary concern is to show their accountability to upper-level authorities” (Cai, 2015: 15). As a result, some local leaders have turned to the media in order to show off their governing capability not only in front of the public, but also in front of their superiors.

How to use the news media, however, is a tricky question. Unlike in the Maoist era when an overwhelming barrage of propaganda and suppression of alternative information were the rule, today the public does not believe in excessively positive news. In the face of the real-life problems of ordinary citizens—such as the rising cost of housing, shrinking medical resources, the widening urban-rural gap, and land grabs—excessively positive news and commentary may not succeed in creating a positive image of the government. Instead, they may lead the public to believe that the government is not only incompetent but also negligent. This is especially true for local governments, which often take the blame for many social problems. Tapping into such sentiments, some local leaders realize that skillful use of criticism can mobilize substantial popular support and convincingly display their competence to higher-ups.

Ask the Government on Television 电视问政, a popular program airing on Wuhan Television in Hubei, was created in 2011 under the leadership of the party secretary of Wuhan municipality, Ruan Chengfa. According to a report from Southern Weekend (Chu and Luo, 2013), during the deliberations over creating the program, there was disagreement among the top leaders of Wuhan over whether to broadcast the show live. Pushed by Ruan, the Standing Committee of the CCP Wuhan Committee decided in favor of live broadcasts. Ask the Government is a special television program with two to five episodes each year, the number depending on the decision of the municipal government. Since producing this program was a political task assigned by the municipality, the Wuhan Television producers and anchors were provided with a list of local leaders required to attend and the anchors were allowed to ask critical questions. In fact, it was reported that Ruan once requested an anchor to question a member of the Standing Committee of the CCP Wuhan Committee “until he sweats” (Chu and Luo, 2013).

Ask the Government on Television has been highly popular among the public. Its ratings were higher than primetime television dramas in 2012, according to a report in People’s Daily (Zheng and Ren, 2013). Since its creation, the program has continued to gain momentum. According to the mouthpiece of CCP Hubei Committee, Changjiang Daily, in July 2015, 53 government officials—of which 12 were above the deputy municipal level 副市级—were asked to appear on Ask the Government and answer questions from the public (Li, 2015).

There are at least three factors that have contributed to the popularity of Ask the Government. First, ordinary Wuhan citizens, selected through an online registration process, can directly question and challenge government officials before a live audience (Zheng and Ren, 2013). Second, the public grilling and shaming of government officials attracts attention. For ordinary citizens frustrated by the government’s negligence, incompetence, and corruption, this program acts like a safety valve releasing pent-up anger. In fact, according to the media reports on Ask the Government, many government officials “sweat” or “bow and apologize” to the public when questioned about their abysmal job performance (Chu and Luo, 2013). Videos of officials sweating on television or apologizing to the public have gone viral in the Chinese cyberspace. One government official privately complained to the show’s anchor that, “I just bowed to the audience once, and CCTV re-broadcast my bow seventeen times!” (Chu and Luo, 2013). Indeed, government officials “sweating” and “apologizing” are such uncommon phenomena in China’s political landscape that live broadcasting these embarrassing moments created a strong reaction among the public. Regardless of whether citizens believe in the sincerity of officials’ apologies and whether change ensues, this display before a large television audience has resulted in a positive public reaction.

Third and more important, this television program has had a real impact on local politics. From November 2011, when the program was launched, to April 2012, there were 96 cases discussed on Ask the Government, 16 leaders were punished by the Wuhan Discipline Inspection Commission, and 106 leaders were criticized, according to a People’s Daily report (Zheng and Ren, 2013). However, this does not mean that all incompetent and corrupt officials in Wuhan were punished as a result of the program. Nor does it mean that the anchor can ask any question of government officials. In fact, there have been specific limits as to which questions can be asked. For example, questions about the value of illegal gifts, whether in the form of money or goods, could not be asked. In addition, questions about specific policies or the political system were off limits (Chu and Luo, 2013).

After Ask the Government on Television in Wuhan became popular, municipal governments in other provinces quickly created similar television programs. Presently, Ask the Government on Television is broadcasting in Wuhan; in Changsha, Hunan; in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region; in Bazhong, Sichuan; and in several cities in Guangdong and Henan. A People’s Daily report dubbed this new form of television supervision as the “final exams” for government officials, since such programs are seen as a year-end review and evaluation of government officials (Zheng and Ren, 2013).

The central leadership, through its media outlets, has praised the popularity and encouraged broadcasting of these Ask the Government programs. People’s Daily in its December 27, 2013 article praised them based on their popularity with the public, the removal of formalism in the direct questioning and grilling of government officials, and their real impact in terms of punishing incompetent and corrupt officials (Zheng and Ren, 2013). Moreover, citing a law professor from Peking University, People’s Daily argued that these television programs should be normalized or institutionalized.

Despite high levels of popularity and profitability, it is important to note that the Ask the Government on Television programs were created by political leaders, not television producers. Besides using these programs to strengthen their authority, local leaders also use media criticism to impress superiors through showing off their capability to govern and their popularity with the public. The praise from People’s Daily and the adoption of the program by other municipal governments demonstrate the success of the program. Recently, Study Times, the official media outlet of the CCP Central Party School, praised Ask the Government programs and suggested that they be further developed so that they can facilitate effective governance (Yang and Yu, 2015). Moreover, as early as 2009, Xi Jinping, then vice president, emphasized that government officials should strengthen their ability to handle, or manipulate, the media (Zhao, 2012). Given this, Ruan Chengfa, the party secretary of Wuhan who was key to creating and sustaining the program, certainly gained politically from its success. Although the positive commentary from the mouthpieces of the central leadership did not name Ruan, the praise clearly indicates that Ask the Government on Television has earned him the reputation of effectively using the media to the advantage of the government.

Conclusion

The media have always been an important tool controlled and used by the party-state for political purposes. However, its use of the media varies according to the particular political circumstances involved. The divergent interests of the central and local governments have driven officials to resort to informal means, such as media criticism, to achieve their goals. The central government has used criticism to monitor local officials and to establish the image of “central good, local bad.” Local leaders, in turn, have used criticism to undergird their authority and to impress their superiors through showing off their capability to govern and their popularity with the public.

In this way, criticism has become an informal tool in central-local government relations. In the increasingly complex dynamics of these relations, it seems that both central and local political actors consider formal institutions inadequate for achieving their respective goals. The central government has an elaborate system of local control, yet the problem of local noncompliance persists. Instead of changing formal institutions, the central government has resorted to criticism as an informal way of reining in local officials. Similarly, local leaders seem to consider the formal evaluation system for cadre promotion insufficient for ensuring that they win higher-level positions. Informal and innovative measures outside of the formal evaluation system thus have become a focal point in local leaders’ career advancement. While formal institutions and practices remain important, informal tools and channels are essential for understanding China’s authoritarian politics.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank John James Kennedy, Kathryn Bernhardt, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. The author would also like to thank Michael S. Rabin and field informants for their collaboration and support. Any errors are the author’s own.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

Dan Chen is assistant professor of Political Science and Asian Studies at Elizabethtown College. Her research interests include media politics, public opinion, Chinese politics, and authoritarian durability.

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